Immaculate
by Just Another Soul
Summary: Carnage, turmoil, and the ever frequent sound of echoing gunshots. Nobody is shocked or disturbed. Murder is an everyday occurrence in Roanapur... but somebody has to clean up the mess. A one-shot Sawyer the Cleaner centric.


**Immaculate**

im·mac·u·late

_–adjective_

1. free from spot or stain; spotlessly clean  
2. free from fault or flaw; free from errors

Disclaimer: Black Lagoon and its characters © Rei Hiroe

* * *

Carnage, turmoil, and the ever frequent sound of echoing gunshots. Nobody is shocked or disturbed. Murder is an everyday occurrence in Roanapur...

... but somebody has to clean up the mess.

Any common thug could tell Roanapur was not a place for the light of heart. It was a city that thrived on vice and spat on virtue. It was a city founded upon sin and born in shadows. It was a city forged from blood and bullets. It was a city that was, in layman's terms, a _very_ bad place.

Hookers, junkies, mercenaries, and everything else in between, one could bet their own mother's life that the worst of the worst – or the best of the best, depending upon who was being asked– were in Roanapur. A good bulk of the people who made up the city were either involved with the depravity of drugs, the demeaning existence of prostitution, the droll "living"of extortion, the mediocre acts of larceny and the ever childish misdemeanors of drunken vandalism. Just to name a few...

Then, of course, there were the killers.

They went by many different names: Assassins, bounty hunters, mercenaries, hit men, triggermen, executioners... The list went on. However, at the very core of their beings, they were all _murderers_ and no amount of fancy titles and widespread reputations could change that.

With a well-known fact like that being established in Roanapur, it came as no surprise that murder was not an uncommon occurrence. Even the most oblivious of souls could tell that Roanapur was a city that produced more dead bodies than most modern war zones. With such an unimaginably high record of body counts, the city _needed_ a means of "cleaning up" all those unwanted corpses.

The smaller gangs consisting of ten men or less within the city were almost always likely to dispose of their victim together as a group. The most common method amongst them was to simply place the corpse in a garbage bag and dump it in the sea. Yes, it got the body out of their hair, but it was not the most environmentally friendly way of doing it. It wasn't very efficient, either. Then there were the slightly larger factions that weren't quite large _enough_ to be deemed worthy of being called an organized syndicate, but they were considered somewhat higher up on the criminal hierarchy compared to the small-time gangs that simply threw their bodies in the water in garbage bags. No, they tied weights to the bottom of the victim's feet before chucking them in the water. The method was somewhat better, but still undignified and sloppy. Though, the act of letting a body sleep with the fishes seemed almost ingenious compared to the simple, half-assed act of a single, drunken "villain" placing a body in a dumpster or leaving it in the middle of an alleyway where anyone could see it.

Regardless of this, the hope of disposing of a body in a "proper" manner was not mere fantasy. The top dogs, the greatest of villains, the ones who ruthlessly slaughtered those that stood in their way of attaining the highest position of power any mere mortal could achieve in Roanapur; _they_ were the ones with the most common sense on the matters regarding the elimination of an unwanted body. Oh no, they did not wrap a body in plastic, tie on some weights and toss it in the sea. They did not dig a shallow hole or find the nearest dumpster to get rid of their unwanted "garbage." They also most certainly did not just kill their designated target and leave them to rot in an alleyway. No, they did none of that. Those who held the highest positions in the Roanapur hierarchy were intelligent. They were savvy. They were dignified.

They called the _professionals._

"Sawyer?" The gothic woman momentarily paused the video game she was previously occupied with and looked over at the silver haired man –sitting on the other side of the couch– who had asked her name aloud as he lifted his eyes away from the book he was reading.

**"****What is it, Rotton?"** Sawyer's Ultravoice managed to pick up on a tone that was laced with a certain forwardness that had a "please be brief" feeling to it. She wanted to give Rotton the hint to say whatever he intended to ask her and get it over with so she could get back to the unspoken joy of a virtual zombie massacre.

"I was wondering..." Rotton trailed off, now somewhat unsure if he should continue. Normally, the man would have kept to himself, but the question he had wanted to ask had been clinging to the very recesses of his mind for a month.

**"****Yes?"** Sawyer pressed.

"I was wondering... What is the worst you've ever encountered?" The gothic woman gave the clumsy mercenary a bemused look.

**"****That depends... What is it... that you're asking... is the worst?"**

"Your job," he specified, "The worst you've seen in your line of work. The worst scenario you've had to 'clean up,' what is it?" A long pause followed afterwards. Sawyer took her eyes off of Rotton and looked at the ceiling with an indifferent expression, before she lifted up her right index finger and lightly placed it on the side of her jaw, as if in thought. The choker-styled Ultravoice around her neck uttered a static hiss, signaling that the woman hummed a bit while she was thinking. Sawyer then abandoned the thinking posture and broke the silence.

**"****Rotton... Tell me... what **_**you**_** think... is the worst I've seen."** Rotton's eyebrows furrowed a bit at that response.

"What _I_ think?"

**"****Yes, I want to know... what **_**you**_** think. Then, I'll tell you... what **_**I**_** think,"** Sawyer clarified. She wanted to hear what Rotton thought of as "the worst" so she could see just how dark the man's mind could be. It was also just a little precaution to see if he could handle whatever she told him about her line of work. Rotton held his jaw in thought for a few seconds before answering.

"A young woman, maybe a teenager, stabbed, kicked, beaten, shot and blown apart by several shotguns in a gang assault," Rotton said. Sawyer looked back up at the ceiling, repeating her thinking posture, before shrugging.

**"****I guess,"** Sawyer said, taking off the pause and going back to her zombie holocaust. Rotton, not quite satisfied with her answer, unwisely pressed the issue.

"What do you mean, 'I guess'? Is that all you think?" he asked in disbelief. Even with her silent demeanor, he assumed Sawyer would have given a more detailed answer than a simple "I guess." The cleaner sighed and put her game back on pause once again.

**"****What I mean by... 'I guess' is... I guess...**_** in a way**_**... it could have been the worst I've encountered," **she said, slightly annoyed that Rotton interrupted her gaming experience again.

"In a way?" Rotton asked. Sawyer sighed. Honestly, Rotton seemed to be so oblivious sometimes. Sawyer pressed the button that ended the pause and allowed her to continue her unrelenting assault on the virtual undead. Without taking her eyes off of the screen of the television and repeatedly mashing the buttons on the controller, Sawyer gave Rotton the detailed answer he so eagerly desired.

**"****Alright... the young woman in question... a teenager... she gets stabbed, kicked, beaten, shot and blown apart by several shotguns... in a gang assault. Now, let's go deeper... into the story. The young woman was six months pregnant... when the attack happened... She was murdered in her own apartment... and she was a drug addict... that lived in her own filth... She was surrounded by her own urine, feces, vomit and blood... with dirty syringe needles scattered all over the floor... The body begins to decay... Then flies come into the apartment and lay their eggs in every wound and orifice they can find... Then the eggs hatch and maggots begin to crawl all over the body... and eat it... They eat the tongue... They eat the eyes... They even eat the unborn fetus... Then, three weeks later... the landlord discovers the body... and _I'm_ called in to clean it up. So... seeing a young woman, maybe a teenager, that has been stabbed, kicked, beaten, shot and blown apart by several shotguns in a gang assault... _in a way_... could possibly be the worst I've encountered." **

A gargled scream echoed throughout the room as the final boss that stood in the way of Sawyer's victory was gored by a massive, pixelated chainsaw. An agonizingly long silence followed as Rotton put his fist up to his mouth in an attempt to keep the bile from rising in his throat. The silence lasted for a good thirty seconds, until it was broken by a very blatant comment.

"Aiya, that fucked up," Shenhua said. Rotton turned around and quickly exhaled a bit in shock. He had no idea Shenhua was standing behind the couch. Unfortunately, she had come in when Sawyer started speaking about the ugly details of her work. The Taiwanese assassin and the silver haired bounty hunter shared the same disturbed expression as they cautiously looked at Sawyer. She was just sitting there, holding the controller and staring at the screen, her game finished. She was thinking again. About what, Shenhua and Rotton didn't know, and after hearing the gothic woman's opinion about what could have been the worst encounter she ever faced, they really didn't want to know what was going on in that head of hers.

They didn't see it because her face was turned away from the both of them, but Sawyer had begun to exhibit a wry smile. Not because she had probably killed a little part of Rotton and Shenhua's "innocence," but it was because she had lied to them.

She had encountered much, _much_ worse.

Though it was an absolutely vital function within the city of Roanapur, the business of "cleaning" was a most profitable one, but certainly not the most coveted. Shooting a person in the head and instantly killing them was one thing, but having to deal with the actual _dead_ body and find a proper means of getting rid of it was a job that rarely anyone would envy. Thus, it made a _good_ cleaner a valuable asset to the society. **Great** was considered even better than _good_, so naturally, a **great** cleaner was valued more. Then of course, above **great**, there was the _**best**_. Out of the very few that chose to deal with the dead, the _**best**_ had earned the reputation as the most adept, the most skilled, the most efficient and therefore, the most wanted.

Sawyer the Cleaner was the _**best**_.

At a first glance, Sawyer appeared to be a fragile girl. Her rather short height and small frame accessorized with attire reminiscent of a gothic lolita would've deceived people into thinking she was nothing more than a helpless soul that had accidentally wandered into Roanapur. However, one look at her eyes and a person could immediately tell she wasn't as helpless or fragile as she was originally thought to be. To say Sawyer's eyes looked "a tad bit cold" would be the equivalent to saying the Sahara was "a tad bit hot." It was not a mere exaggeration to say that Sawyer's eyes were the epitome of indifference and apathy.

Of course, it wasn't as though those traits weren't uncommon within the community. A great majority of the populace in the city were contract killers. A person who was kind, caring, considerate and attributed with the qualities of a saint wouldn't dare to even think about taking the life of another human being, but a bounty hunter didn't possess saintly qualities. Murder in Roanapur was commonplace. The cold demeanor and immorality of the killers clung to the atmosphere and surrounded the area like an ominous fog. In the city of Roanapur, taking the life of another wasn't really thought of as that big of a deal. However, despite the callousness of the killers, there was one very large detail that defined the limits of their comfort zone.

Murder is defined as the act of killing another human being. In order to _kill_ another human being, the victim in question must first be _alive_ in order for _murder_ to take place. Therefore, it was a crucial detail to note that even though they had the intention of bringing _death_ to another, a bounty hunter mainly dealt with the _living_. That was the difference that separated a contract killer from a contract cleaner.

The killers dealt with the living. The cleaners dealt with the dead.

When a full-time mercenary went out for a job, all they had on their mind was to track down their target, kill the target in question, and get the payment for doing the work. It was as simple as that. Despite this, there was one flaw that seemed to be a crack in most killers' emotional armor. Bloodshed was one thing to a merc, but then having to take care of the victim's corpse after a hit just didn't seem so appealing. They didn't want to deal with the body after the life they had taken was gone. When the victim was still alive, all the killer had on their mind was getting the job done and receiving the payment that was due, but when they were faced with the task of actually have to take time to figure out how to get rid of the body, the empathy the villain had thought they had abandoned long ago surfaced.

It was a natural human reaction to be squeamish around a dead body, much less having to physically touch it and find a way to dispose of it. If a "proper" disposal were to take place, it was only logical to chop the body to pieces to make the ordeal go smoother. However, the casual killer wouldn't want waste that sort of time around someone that they could've given a rat's ass about. Also, though many killers would probably never admit it, it was likely that the longer they stayed around the corpse, the more they would become aware of their own mortality and also become aware of the seriousness of the act they committed. They would become aware that they didn't just pop a bullet into a mass of flesh and blood. They had murdered an actual _person_. No killer wanted to think of that. Not only would it have been a danger to their reputation if people knew they had sympathized with a victim, but it would also cause psychological and emotional confusion to somebody who claimed to be a completely callous individual in their chosen field of work. It was just better for the killer to pay a cleaner so they wouldn't have to deal with it all.

This was why so many of the citizens of Roanapur considered Sawyer to be on a completely different level of apathy and indifference.

Needless to say, it was somewhat difficult to find a _good_ cleaner, much less a **great** one. At first, whenever somebody decided to become a cleaner, it was mostly because they were uncomfortable with the thought of themselves committing murder, so they figured if they "interacted" with a lifeless body, they wouldn't have to deal with all the emotional turmoil of taking another person's life. However, most –if not all– of the people with this line of thought fell out of the cleaning profession within the first three weeks. They were just too damned empathetic. Whenever a corpse was dropped off, their minds drifted off to thinking, "This person was alive at one time... This person had a life of their own... This person could have had a family... This person could have..."

Sawyer didn't think about that, because she honestly didn't care. When she was chopping up a body, she wasn't thinking about the life the person could have had or what they got mixed up in to get themselves killed. What Sawyer thought about was that she needed to dispose of the body in the quickest and most efficient manner she was capable of so she could get paid for her services and move on to the next job. She didn't think of the bodies she received as "people." The _person_ that inhabited the body was gone. She wasn't dealing with an actual human anymore. It was all just flesh, blood and tissue to her. All she was dealing with was a _body_, a **corpse**, a_** hollow shell**_ that was just taking up space and needed to be disposed of immediately.

What made this line of thinking even more gruesomely astonishing was that in addition to being a cleaner, Sawyer was also a killer herself, and she _enjoyed_ her work. Sawyer was a unique cleaner, as she didn't just offer her services for the dead, but she also volunteered to deal with the living. She absolutely _loved_ it when she was given a live specimen to dispose of. She loved to see the panic and desperation in the eyes of the person that was bound before her, struggling to free themselves from their inevitable fate and to hear their screams echo throughout the bloodstained room as she butchered them alive. She admired the acoustics of the place every time she heard the final breath of her victim leave the body...

What Sawyer loved even more about her job was when Mr. Chang asked her to "make an example" of the body she was given. A disposal was just some quick chopping and mincing here and there and she was done, but when she was being paid to make an _example_, she could get _creative_. Because whenever Sawyer was told to make an example, that didn't just mean to mutilate the body in a manner that would intimidate other factions from trying to double-cross the Triads, but it also meant that she could also butcher the body in a fashion that entertained her.

Her personal favorite method of execution was a glorified dismemberment that would make an experienced surgeon faint. Usually, she would quickly slash the torso open and expose all the vital organs to the air, just so she could see the heart of the victim still beating within before she promptly ripped it out and chopped it to bits, making the other organs follow suit, watching the reaction of their owner and forcing him or her to watch the macabre spectacle before they went into shock or died from the immense pain and blood loss. Though, she didn't _always_ taunt her victims with the sight of their own internal organs becoming a revolting sight of strips and mush. Sometimes, she would peel the skin off of the victim's arms and legs, before dismembering the actual parts completely from the body and chopping them into bits. Admittedly, was not quite as "colorful" as ripping organs out of a body while they were still pulsing with life, but the screams that came from the tortured soul while she skinned them alive made up for it.

Of course, that only happened if Sawyer was in the mood to be entertained. If she was in a hurry to get to another job, it would just be a simple matter of cutting a person to pieces in a "cleanly" manner and putting them into a wooden crate to be dropped off to the address of the person Mr. Chang wanted send a message to. However, Sawyer wasn't _totally_ heartless whenever it came to making an example of somebody.

She usually taped a note on the inside of the crate with "Have a nice day" written on it with a smiley face underneath the text.

... It seemed that not only was Sawyer apathetic to her victim's cries, but she was horribly twisted as well.

Sawyer the Cleaner was odd. She was callous about the disposal of dead bodies, yet passionate about the process of disposing of them. She was heartless to the cries of those she executed, yet vehement about the manner of which she executed them. She chose the most efficient and dexterous methods of "cleaning up" an unwanted corpse and became notorious for her work, yet her signature weapon was... Well, her choice was rather odd, just like her.

Even though her chosen profession was as a cleaner, Sawyer delved into bounty hunter work every once in while. After all, it's not _always_ fun being cooped up near a meat packing plant all the time. That was understandable. As a citizen of Roanapur, Sawyer had every right to engage in a hunt if she felt like it. It was just that her choice of weaponry seemed rather strange. Nobody knew _why_ out of all the available firearms, explosives and even blades within the city, Sawyer had chosen a _chainsaw_ of all things. After all, compared to a gun or even a kukri blade, a chainsaw seemed to be a rather impractical choice of weaponry... in the hands of a novice.

Sawyer was an expert. She was well aware of the disadvantages and dangers of handling a chainsaw outside of the comfort of a disposal job and using it as an actual melee weapon in the field. She knew she could have chosen a gun if she wanted to, but the mere thought of wielding one seemed so incredibly bland to her.

Sawyer didn't like things that were common. She didn't like things that were considered "mainstream" or "normal." She liked things that were unique. A chainsaw being used as an actual murder weapon was a prospect that she didn't see at all in Roanapur. Yes, the appearance and use of chainsaws in such a brutal manner seemed to be frequent in movies and video games, but Sawyer had never really seen in done in real life. So, she decided to utilize an option that no one else in the city would have thought of and claimed the chainsaw as her own.

However, this choice wasn't made without making some adjustments. Sawyer wasn't an idiot. She knew a brand new chainsaw right off the assembly line wouldn't be enough to become a fully functional and _practical_ weapon. A regular, industrial sized chainsaw was good, but it still had it's weak points. For one, high risk of kickback was a problem that needed to be dealt with. If Sawyer had a _regular_ chainsaw and was in a situation where she ended up jamming it into a substance made out of metal, the chain would snag and end up with the rest of the unit flying towards her and taking off one of her arms, if not taking her life. So, she had a saw chain with teeth specially modified to prevent such a thing from happening. If she ever encountered a situation were she would be dealing with say... a steel rack, instead of experiencing potentially deadly kickback, the teeth of the saw chain would simply cause friction against the metal and create sparks.

There was another problem to deal with, which was the actual build of the weapon itself. If Sawyer was going to be dealing with a gunman, she needed some protection. Wearing a bulletproof vest would be an obvious precaution, but it restricted movement a bit and the last thing a bounty hunter needed in a city like Roanapur was something that slowed them down. So instead, she had the guide bar specifically reinforced to block bullets. However, Sawyer knew how to pick her fights. Obviously, if she was being shot at, it would only be natural to retreat until the target let their guard down. The bulletproof guide bar was more like an alternative to a vest in case she needed to protect herself for a few precious seconds to get out of the gunman's range. It offered safety _and_ mobility.

There were a few more concerns such as being able to start the engine easily and being able to keep the air intake filter from clogging up with blood, but those were also dealt with and modified to suit the cleaner's needs. After all the adjustments were made, Sawyer had a piece of work that would make the engineers at Stihl gawk in awe.

Uniqueness wasn't the only basis of foundation of why Sawyer had chosen a chainsaw. Another major reason she used it as her signature weapon was because while she found macabre joy in using the odd mechanism in such a horrendous manner, it also helped her keep an emotional detachment from her victims. In general, guns and swords were created for the sole purpose of bringing down another person. Chainsaws were created with main intention of cutting down _trees_, not humans. Whenever a chainsaw was used on an actual person, it dehumanized the poor soul on the receiving end of the weapon. It was Sawyer's personal critique on the victim. Whenever she gored somebody with her chainsaw, it was the equivalent of her saying, "I don't think of you as a human, therefore, your life has absolutely no value."

Needless to say, it was a degrading way to die.

The final reason Sawyer used a chainsaw was because even though it was a device that distanced herself emotionally from her victim, it was also something that made the _act_ of cutting them to pieces an "intimate" affair. A gun was much too simple. Pull the trigger, hit your target and it's all over before you know it. Explosives were far too exuberant in display. One giant bang and in a matter of seconds, your target's been blown to bits. It was all so very droll to Sawyer. She wanted to savor the moment, make it last... and her beloved chainsaw was just the weapon to do it. There was so much more _contact_ involved. The way the chainsaw roared as she revved it up, the feel of steady pulses and vibrations sent from the small internal combustion engine, the slightly stifled sound of her victim's cries as the carbide-covered teeth on the cutting chain ate away at flesh, blood and bone; it was simply intoxicating to her. No bullets or explosives or even a single-edged blade could ever compare to it. It was an act of brutality laced with zeal. It was a spectacle of immorality mixed with ardor. It was a twisted and cruel irony of apathetic passion...

... and Sawyer found it to be absolutely beautiful.

With this mindset deeply rooted within her psyche, it came as no shock that many of the people in Roanapur thought of Sawyer as a monster. Sawyer paid it no mind, as they were probably right. She seemed to be one of the more cruel characters within the city, but it was important to realize that although she was brutal and perhaps even sadistic in her behavior towards both the living and the dead, she wasn't _born_ that way. The emotional detachment she had towards people and corpses was learned at a very young age, long before the "incident" that led to the loss of her larynx. When Sawyer was a little girl, she would often help her family butcher animals and prepare the meat to be cooked for dinner or sold in a local market. She mostly dealt with chickens and perhaps a small lamb or two, but as she got older, she gradually began to deal with larger animals such as pigs and cattle. Most twelve year olds would have been mortified at even _looking_ at a cow getting slaughtered, but Sawyer had been butchering animals for so long, it had become as natural as an instinct. She was just numb to it all.

Unfortunately for the gothic woman, by the time she was in her mid-teens, her life had taken a few nasty turns and she found herself butchering humans instead of animals, "cleaning up" their corpses. However, in addition to all the bad turns she had experienced in her life and because butchering was a second nature to her, she wasn't all that disturbed whenever she was requested to skin the bodies or dismember them until they could no longer be recognized as human. To Sawyer, the process was the same as it was with an animal, she was just working with a different anatomy.

Unlike the animals, the human flesh wasn't prepared to be sold in a market. Cannibalism was a tad bit crude, even by Sawyer's standards. Normally, she just chopped and bashed the body to bits and burned the remains until there was nothing but ashes. It was as simple as that. That didn't stop the people of Roanapur from creating rumors about her work, though. Since Sawyer operated out of a meat packing plant that she herself owned, people often made jokes about the "content" of the meat that was sold in the city.

This was an aspect that truly annoyed Sawyer. She was held in high regard and respected as the city's _**best**_ cleaner for a reason. If a person came to her and wanted a specific "squealer" to cease existing, she'd dispose of it _properly_. She wouldn't be so damned lazy as to make it possible for the person that had asked her to do the job in the first place to find the skin from the requested squealer's tattooed knuckle floating around in his soup. It was an insult to even _assume_ Sawyer would do work that was so sloppy... Though, admittedly, both she and Shenhua had once manipulated the joke and tricked Rotton into thinking a beef-filled meat pie that Sawyer baked was filled with human flesh...

... but that was another story.

Despite Sawyer's numbness in regards to her job, she did have a few encounters that were rather unsavory every once in a while. Anything that involved cleaning up a body with maggots automatically made Sawyer want to gag. It wasn't the sight of the larvae eating the body that disgusted her, but it was the fact that the _jackasses_ that were responsible for the murder were too damned cheap to call her in to get rid of the corpse while it was still "fresh." Sawyer also hated it whenever she had to clean up in an area where there was a former junkie. Being a _cleaner_, the gothic woman valued good hygiene and maintenance, and the living residence of a former drug addict just wasn't a pretty picture. She was thankful she had surgeon scrubs and an apron to wear to help protect her from the all the filth.

It wasn't a fact often thought of by a majority of the populace, but cleaners often dealt with more than just a body. They also had to deal with the substances that the body left behind. Blood was an obvious issue, but what made it even more grotesque was what was thriving _in_ the blood. Even if the corpse was considered to be sterile, there were still harmful bacteria and viruses in the crimson fluid that Sawyer had to be wary of. There was also another detail about cleaning up dead bodies that was not-too-glamorous. After a person died, the bladder and bowels automatically emptied themselves. So in addition to dealing with the scent of blood and rotting flesh, the crass aroma of piss and shit was mixed into the air as well.

Another disturbing aspect of dealing with a dead body was something Sawyer wasn't even aware of until she had become an official cleaner in her mid-teens. The gothic woman rued the day she discovered what the term "angel lust" meant. She didn't know what the hell was going on until she read about postmortem priapism in a medical textbook. It was a rather unsettling sight in her first few months in the profession, but she eventually got over the shock and it didn't bother her in the slightest now. As far as Sawyer was concerned, it was just another thing to cut off.

Most people would find working under those conditions mortifying as well as emotionally scarring, but Sawyer wasn't like _most_ people. As nauseating and repulsive as the profession of cleaning may have been, it was like therapy to Sawyer.

Sawyer had _many_ emotional issues. Eda had termed it as a "bad case of melancholia" during the Greenback Jane ordeal, but it was much worse than that. Sawyer's "issues" had symptoms of mental disorders that would put many of the villains in the city to shame. Nobody really knew what made Sawyer tick, but it was a good guess it was related to the scar on the girl's neck and the fact that she couldn't speak without the assistance of her Ultravoice.

It was astonishing that Sawyer had survived an encounter that had dealt such a massive injury to one of the most major arteries in the human body, but it still didn't change the fact that when the girl had woken up from her surgery, she didn't have a larynx. The shock of no longer having one of the most basic human qualities –a voice– sent Sawyer into a panicked state and she had ripped the stitches out of her throat, consequently resulting in a Frankenstein's monster-like scar across her neck. The best the doctors could do to compensate for her loss was to first stitch her throat back together (and monitor her closely so she wouldn't open her wound again) and provide her with an Ultravoice.

Whether the emotional issues started with the scar on her neck or if she had them before her deadly encounter was anybody's guess, but it was quite obvious that a great deal of Sawyer's issues circulated around the presence of her Ultravoice. The girl seemed completely fine (as fine as a sadistic, apathetic cleaner/bounty hunter with a slashed throat could be) whenever she had her mechanical larynx with her, but when it was missing, Sawyer's demeanor just fell to pieces. After she had lost her hand-held device chasing after Greenback Jane, Sawyer received a choker-styled Ultravoice she could strap around her neck so she wouldn't have to worry about losing it easily. There was no doubt it helped _suppress_ the associated issues with the device, but it was certain that it didn't erase them.

There was also a more disturbing point to Sawyer's emotional state of mind. If a person paid close enough attention, they would notice that even on the hottest days of the year, Sawyer _always_ wore long sleeves. With the exceptions of Rotton and Shenhua, no one else in the city was aware of the scars that she had on her arms. And they weren't remains from little nicks or cuts, either. Both of her wrists were marked with horizontal lines. In addition, the undersides of her forearms had large, vertical pink slashes with small "x"es traced over the lines. It was obvious the wounds had been self-inflicted, but noting that they were actual _scars_ rather than scabbed over cuts hinted that it was an occurrence from a long while ago. However, it was unknown if Sawyer had abandoned the habit of self-infliction or if she secretly continued it behind closed doors. The doctors in Roanapur were aware of her past self-abusive behavior, but they didn't dare try to prescribe any pharmaceutical drugs such as Oxazepam or Fluoxetine and the like for fear that Sawyer might go into an "episode" and try to overdose. The doctors knew the various factions of the city would not be very pleased with them if they traced the death of Roanapur's _**best**_ cleaner back to the pills _they_ prescribed.

Of course, Sawyer was well aware she had issues, but it caused her so much pain to even _think_ about them that confronting them was an extremely difficult –if not impossible– task. Since all of her problems were rooted in her emotions, Sawyer decided to the best way for her to deal with them was to take up "cleaning" as her therapeutic alternative. It was a profession that required a stoic disposition and utter indifference. Obviously, it was a job well suited for a person who maintained an apathetic and amoral temperament. The more Sawyer conditioned herself to be generally emotionless, the more she'd be able to distance herself from her _emotional_ issues and therefore, wouldn't be subject to the pain that thinking about those issues caused her. It was a crude method of therapy, but it worked for her. A spirit without emotions didn't feel any pain or sadness or regret. It was like having a clean slate that was free from any damages or flaws. The more numb Sawyer became towards both the dead and the living within Roanapur, the cleaner her emotional slate was, and thus, the freer her spirit was.

Which was absolutely why Sawyer felt like ramming her head into a wall when she became involved with Rotton and Shenhua.

Of all things, she became friends with them. All the walls she had built to keep herself from letting her feel sentimental about _people_ crumbled when she was around them. It wasn't that she wanted to hate Shenhua and Rotton or anything like that. She just didn't want to be _attached_ to them. Naturally, she first told herself "Then don't grow attached," but it was easier said than done. As much as admitting it made her feel as though she was developing an ulcer, Sawyer actually _liked_ Rotton and Shenhua.

It came as a slight surprise to Sawyer that she bonded with Shenhua so easily over their distaste for firearms, but it was a similarity that was appreciated and a welcome topic of conversation between them. Also, the Taiwanese assassin had a level of amorality that matched even Sawyer's state of mind, and though she was a walking death machine in heels, her dangerous persona was laced with a bubbly cheerfulness that was almost infectious. _Almost_. Albeit, Sawyer wasn't exactly the epitome of carefree happiness, but she did sometimes catch herself with a small smile whenever she heard Shenhua tell her about the head she lopped off of some poor soul in such a jubilant and upbeat tone. Shenhua even gave Sawyer a present shortly after becoming better acquainted with her. It was a life-sized mannequin. It was a touching gift, to say the least. Sawyer was pleasantly surprised how well the mannequin went with everything in her home when she hung it up in the corner of her living room, especially after she put 47 nails into its head and ripped off both of its arms.

Her relationship with Shenhua was a slight surprise, but it came as a total shock to Sawyer when she realized she had actually bonded with Rotton. How a guy like _him_ ever wandered into Roanapur, she never figured it out. After all, he didn't seem all that much like the type to be a villain. She remembered the night she had first seen him sitting in the corner of the Yellow Flag. His appearance instantly reminded her of those bishounen type heroes in anime and manga, which was a rather surreal sight considering he was drinking milk in the middle of the most _violent_ bar in the most _evil_ city on Earth.

She immediately wondered if the man had a death wish. Apparently so, considering that Rotton often broke out into a long-winded soliloquy _every single time_ he went out bounty hunting. It didn't help that the gunmen in the city didn't care to hear an entire ultimatum, either. Normally, Sawyer would've wanted to stay away from someone who seemed so out of it, but... Well, Rotton was to Sawyer and Shenhua what that Japanese businessman was to the Lagoon Company: Absolutely useless with a gun, yet somehow still vital to the group. That, and it was rather difficult to forget that Rotton was the one that carried both her _and_ Shenhua to the hospital when that ordeal with the Indian woman went to hell. He even stayed in the hospital with them to make sure they would both be alright.

That was the thing that confused Sawyer. Why, out of all the cities on Earth, did Rotton come to Roanapur? The man seemed too kind to be any true threat as a mercenary. And even if he abandoned his kind demeanor, he would've _still_ had to get over his "soliloquy complex." Sawyer at first dismissed Rotton as a poser, but over time, that really didn't seem to be the case. Rotton was a mysterious man with a strange personality. He seemed completely oblivious to his surroundings during a hunt, yet when he was casually walking down the street or simply hanging out with her and Shenhua, he always had a contemplative expression on his face, like he was _observing_ something. It made her feel a bit odd whenever he looked into her eyes. As cliché as it may have sounded, it felt like Rotton was trying to look into her soul. It didn't make Sawyer uncomfortable, but she had a foreign feeling that was somewhat difficult for her to decipher whenever it happened.

A small part of Sawyer wondered if she just wanted to keep Rotton around as a walking ornament. Really, he wasn't exactly the most skilled contract killer in Roanapur and would've been better off as a male stripper... not that Sawyer would _want_ to see Rotton stripping... she told herself. Of course, Sawyer often pushed the "walking ornament" thing to the back of her mind since she knew that she genuinely did like Rotton. His calm disposition and light voice made him an easy person to be around, and in contrast to his supposed incompetence in the field as a mercenary, he was an _excellent_ video game partner.

However, those details just caused more turmoil for Sawyer. She did indeed like Shenhua and Rotton, but that was a problem, because regardless of being a friend and ally to them both, _Sawyer was __**still a cleaner**__. _She _knew_ Rotton and Shenhua, she _liked_ them, she thought of them as _people_.

If some asshole killed Shenhua or Rotton and she ended up finding their corpses, her "the body is nothing but an empty shell" mentality would go straight out the fucking window.

Sawyer knew that Shenhua was perfectly capable and savvy, but even the most wary of minds could still fall victim to the darkness in Roanapur. It was a city that housed Death, and Death was an indiscriminate force. Death didn't care if a person was young or old, healthy or ill, capable or weak, experienced or naive. It took _any_ life at _any_ place at _any_ time, and Shenhua was no exception to it. Sawyer worried even more about Rotton. He may have been the only person in Roanapur that was competent enough to wear a flak jacket to a gunfight, but Sawyer knew damned well that a bulletproof vest didn't do much to protect one from a bullet aimed right between the eyes. There mere thought of it angered Sawyer. She could think of 100 people off the top of her head that _deserved_ a bullet to the head and Rotton wasn't one of them.

It was a dangerous thing for Sawyer the become attached to certain people. She knew it would screw with her head if she did, and she wished she could detach herself from them, but at the same time... she didn't want to. The cleaner was aware that it was a bad thing for her to bond with others, but she could not deny that she enjoyed being with those she had formed that bond with. The relationships she had with Rotton and Shenhua made her feel pleasant emotions that she thought she had cut herself off from long ago. Being with them made her happy, and she knew because they made her happy, she also knew that she would be incredibly sad when they died. And when Sawyer knew she was going to feel sad, she also knew she was going to feel pain, and when she knew she was going to feel pain, she knew that her clean slate would be blemished; forever.

She didn't want to feel emotion, yet she yearned for it. She wanted to be completely apathetic, yet she didn't want to give up what made her vehement. It was a cruel contradiction of her nature and it was a twisted irony that tormented her, but she endured it. After all, Shenhua and Rotton were still alive, so she didn't have a reason to be sad... not yet...

Until that fateful day, Sawyer would continue to dispose of the unwanted bodies at the command of those who desired her services, cloaking whatever humanity and empathy she had underneath a veil of flesh and blood, laced with an impassive glance and a cruel disposition, tediously trying to maintain her indifference among tainted souls, all the while doing everything in her power to keep her flawless slate entirely, utterly and completely immaculate.

**THE END**

* * *

**A/N:** Hold on... give me a moment to abruptly drop my head on top of my desk... Alright, I'm done with that. If you read this fic all the way through, get yourself a cookie or something. Wow, I didn't think I was going to write a one-shot to be that long... But hey, it's a Sawyer centric, so it was worth it. And yes, there was intentional Sawyer/Rotton/Shenhua fluff in this. I couldn't help myself.

Believe it or not, I was originally going to give this fanfiction a "T" rating, but then I realized how... utterly _screwed_ _up_ the content of this story was at certain intervals...

I know I made Sawyer out to be rather brutal at some points in this fic, especially regarding when she was killing someone, but I couldn't help but think that she is a bit of a sadist. When she was talking to Rock and Jane on the roof in episode 18, she seemed to be taunting them a bit. She was even smiling when she told them she was going to saw off their hands and feet.

I'm not making up the thing about Sawyer having scars on her wrists. In volume 6 of the manga, if you look really closely at her wrist on first panel of page 83, you can see the scars.

I know the whole "killers having sympathy with the dead" part seemed a tad bit iffy, since these _are_ Roanapur citizens we're talking about, but if you think about it, it could be a possibility. After all, during the entire series, you see all the mercs in Roanapur kill somebody, but they never actually deal with the corpse themselves. There was one instance where some guys dumped a body in a garbage bag in the bay in the beginning of episode 17, but even then, the body was _covered_ so they weren't looking at the corpse.

Yes, I actually did research for this. Before I started writing this story, I learned a little bit about crime scene cleaners in real life and people who dealt with dead bodies for a living. Understandably, a very common detail with occupations that revolve around the dead is that the people who make a living from their profession form coping methods to detach themselves emotionally from the body and thinking about whatever "person" that body inhabited at one time.

I understand that the concept of Sawyer's customized chainsaw seems like a large stretch, since if there really _was_ a saw chain that wouldn't snag against metal and prevent kickback, it would've been invented by now. However, considering there are animes with transforming swords that can manipulate the winds and giant robots that would consume more rocket fuel in ten minutes than a NASA spacecraft would in a month, I figure a souped-up chainsaw wouldn't be too big of a deal.

Some aspects of Sawyer's character seem to be derived from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The chainsaw is the first obvious reference, her name is the second reference ("Sawyer" is the last name of the family in the original TCM series), and when she loses her Ultravoice in the Greenback Jane arc, Sawyer throws a little tantrum and "dances" like Leatherface (when he's going after a victim or when the victim gets away from him) right before she goes catatonic and collapses into the fetal position. I decided to juxtapose another part of Leatherface's character with Sawyer in this fic. In "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning," it shows that Leatherface worked at a slaughterhouse before the whole cannibalism thing went down, so I decided to write in that Sawyer had some experience butchering animals before she became the cleaner we all know and love. It's all up to you to decide if Sawyer's family owned a slaughterhouse or lived on a farm or something of the like.

For those of you who don't know what "angel lust" or a "postmortem priapism" is, don't fret. Now, if you're reading an "M" rated fanfiction, I'm going to assume you're all mature enough to handle what I'm about to tell you. A "postmortem priapism" is just a fancy medical term for an erection that occurs after death. It happens sometimes, usually when a spinal cord injury or pressure on the cerebellum is involved. This was partially why watching people getting executed by hanging was popular in the "old days." However, death erections can also be caused by violent gunshot wounds to the brain or major blood vessels, and even by poisoning in some cases. With Roanapur being inhabited by gunslingers and such, I'm assuming Sawyer has probably had to dispose of bodies with angel lust every now and again.

And yes, it is true. A body actually _does_ release all the contents of their bladder and bowels when a person dies. South Park wasn't lying to you.

Cheers.


End file.
